Thursday, June 30, 2011

My sister, Christine Engström, is a photographer, and lot of the time she uses me as her photo object. A few months ago she decided she wanted to do a series of pictures portraying different fairy tale characters - but in weirder - or maybe I should say more realistic - ways than they are normally portrayed in the stories. Last Easter we started with Snow White. If you first put on a belt that cinches your waist so much you literally loses your breath, and then choke on a poisoned apple, you probably won't look like a pretty little expressionless princess anymore. So I put some bleaching make up on, tied a red ribbon in my hair, put a pair of white lenses in my eyes, and skipped out into the forest. We found a perfect location just beside a little lake and started shooting. The problem was just that this perfect spot happened to be in the middle of the ant's freeway. I don't know how many bites I got. But the things I wont do for art...

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

On Midsummer Day there was no time to sleep in after the long Midsummer Eve celebration. Because on this day Fanny Kellerman and Michael McCarthy became Mr and Mrs Kellerman. The wedding took place in the mother of the bride's garden. We were around seventy guests who gathered under umbrellas in the pouring rain to witness the short ceremony. After that we all drank champagne and sang "Singin' in the rain" to the tunes of an accordion. Then it happened! It stopped raining, the sun came out, and the rest of the day/evening/night became a perfect summer feast with music, dancing, food, friend making, wine and more food!

The beautiful bride wore a lovely tea length vintage dress from the 50s. She said that I would get it if she died, but I love both her and Michael too much to ruin their life together by killing the bride. Buggers!

Later she changed into another gorgeous vintage dress she had found in her own shop Kellerman Vintage.

The groom wore a custom made mods inspired suit, designed by the himself and the bride together with the seamstress.

The bridal bouquet Fanny had made herself with buttons, pearls and broaches. It sparkled beautifully when the sun decided to come out.

All the goodies - and they were many - on the coffee table went in pastel colors. Wish I could have tasted everything!

When the sun shone on Kajsa's sequin covered blouse we hung her in a tree and used her as our own perfect disco ball!...Ok. That was a bit of a lie. But we could have!...Here she is with her man Mikael.

Tim Burtonesque wedding gift by Kari Ekermann.

One of the guests buried a piece of bread for later...

And last but not least - but maybe smallest. I wore a tea length vintage dress from the 50s and an Original Hat Nip by Danciger half-hat made of fabric lily of the valleys. A bumble bee landed on it for a while, thinking the flowers were real. But after some time he gave up...

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Tomorrow is the day we celebrate midsummer here in Sweden. An old fertility feast the christians for some reason forgot to remove from the calendar, or make into a holy, christian celebration. What we do this day is dress a pole (it actually resembles a crucifix) with leaves and flowers. This pole also has two round circles hanging high up on both it's sides. Then we put this pole into a hole in mother earth, and dance (especially small children) around this big phallus symbol...

After that we eat lot's of summery foods. Especially pickled herring. Yummy! During this day people have a habit of getting a little drunk too. A big cause for this is the schnapps we drink while we're eating. But before we schnapps, we sing a little song.

I'll be celebrating in Stockholm with my sister and some other friends. Picnic in a park for lunch, and barbecue on top of a roof for dinner...If the weather is good...

Happy Midsummer to you all!

And of course we're always naked when we dance around the midsummer pole...

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Like many other girls (and a few boys), I suffer from a disease called shoeotitis. This is a very serious disease. We who have it can usually lead pretty normal lives, and we don't always feel sick. But when an attack comes on, the only cure is to buy a new pair of shoes! So if you see a girl with a whole closet full of shoes, don't blame her, it's not her fault she was born with this lifelong disease.

Like with certain medicines working differently on different people, so it is with different brands when it comes to us shoe-users. For me personally, I've noticed that the finnish brand Minna Parikka works very well. They're a bit on the expensive side, so so far I only have three pairs (two of which I bought at half price off I might add). Something I haven't tried yet, but that I think would work wonders on my illness are some Christian Louboutins. These I put in the category "very expensive" though, so if I did try it, and it would make me feel as good as I think it would...Well, I guess you can figure out the rest yourselves...

Beware though of people saying they buy shoes because they have shoeotitis, but aren't really sick! These people are simply addicted to shoes, and need help. I am not one of these people! I really have shoeotitis!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

This summer I've been invited to no less than two weddings! As I was staring myself blind at the computer screen, trying to find a nice vintage dress to wear to at least one of these weddings, I came across something I immediately fell in love with! It was a tea length dress from the early 50s, made out of white tulle, white lace, and silver paillettes. For obvious reasons this is a dress not so suitable to wear to a wedding - unless you're the bride yourself - so the reasonable thing would have been to just have forgotten about it and continued searching for something more wearable. But then it happened! My right hand moves the little arrow on the screen to the "buy" button, and clicks it!!! I had obviously nothing to do with it, but thanks to that naughty hand the dress is now hanging in my closet. And it's so pretty!

In some of the seams you an see that it was completely white from the beginning. Now the lace has more of an ivory color, and the net looks a bit "dusty". The skirt is completely transparent and has to be worn with a petticoat, that will also give it some volume. But the transparency, together with the dusty color, makes it look like smoke or mist half-dissolving in the air. Kind of what you can imagine a ghost would wear. The paillettes, as they hit each other when you move, gives of a lovely sound like little dropps of silver rain falling on the ground...

And, yes, I did find another, proper, dress to wear at a wedding too...

Monday, June 20, 2011

My first blog entry! What better way to start than with some news about an iconic dress - the famous ivory dress Marilyn Monroe wore in the movie "The Seven Year Itch". At an auction in Beverly Hills last Saturday night, it was sold. I really hope the new owner has some nice plans for it, because he or she payed 5.6 million dollars for it! The bidding took 20 minutes and must have been pretty nerve-wracking. As Marilyn herself had only 2000 dollars in her bank account at the time of her death, she might regret not selling it while she was still alive, if she watched the auction from Hollywood Heaven!

Photo: Jan Persson

About Me

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! I'm a Swedish alternative model and burlesque dancer who loves vintage fashion, books, art, music and cats. In this blog I share a bit of my own life, but I also want it to be an inspiring place for people who love the beautiful things here in life...